Marble Madness (ntscus) (nes) [Any %] [Single Segment]
Run Information
Completion Date April 24, 2017
State Obsolete
Internal Comments:
Comment State Information Checkpoint None

Incorporated the new Intermediate bounce timesave and knocked ~0.7s off the WR tonight!

Links
Verification Thread
Run Comments

Marble Madness Record History:

July 31 2005, 3:13, Elliott Feiertag
October 27 2008, 2:54.2, Andrew Gardikis
March 18 2014, 2:52.1, Steve Barrios
March 21 2014, 2:50.9, Steve Barrios
May 22 2014, 2:48.84, Big Walsh
July 24 2014, 2:48.68, Steve Barrios
October 9 2014, 2:47.51, Steve Barrios
July 24 2015, 2:46.930, Toad22484
July 25 2015, 2:45.530 Toad22484
December 5 2016, 2:45.465, Steve Barrios
October 21 2016, 2:44.998, Steve Barrios
April 24 2017, 2:44.271, Steve Barrios

This speedrun of Marble Madness times out to 2:44.271 in Yua, and has 0 deaths.  It was done live on http://www.twitch.tv/elipsys and retimed afterwards.  Looking at the record history, you can see that there has been a lot of activity in the last 3 years.  With current human techniques, a 2:42 may one day be within the real of possibility.  Individual level commentary is as follows:

Level Commentary:

Practice Race:

If you do this level right, you're playing the last half of it blind. I always shoot to finish this level with 55 seconds remaining on the in-game timer, and reset otherwise. Fractional gains or losses here distill down to three different possible frame rules that you can land on, the third being exceedingly rare.

This practice race went unremarkably, with the marble going offscreen and relying on muscle memory to complete the level.

Beginner Race:

The time saves in this level are barely perceptible. There is absolutely no point to any time saves prior to the draw bridge, as it forces you to wait for it to go to the down position before proceeding.  In this run I had a very good draw bridge by approaching it nearly on the same frame that it moves down.  The rest of the time saves here are from good movement and cornering on the section after the pipe.  All of this amounted to me being exactly on pace with the previous WR, due to frame rules.

Intermediate Race:

The Intermediate race shows off the newest strategy that runners Toad22484 and Yelsraek have been incorporating into their runs.  While it doesn't look like much, the double wallbounce on the first screen saves somewhere between 0.75 to 1.0 seconds over the old strategy.  It can be a bit janky, but is reasonably consistent to execute with a little practice.  Furthermore, unlike other possible timesaves in this race, this strategy does not force the player any further ahead of the camera - meaning the difficulty of the remainder of the run is not increased due to camera scroll.  I was 0.5s ahead of WR pace at the end of this race.

Aerial Race:

Something amazing happened here.  Out of over 10,000 attempts, this Aerial race was *the best one*.  Full stop.  Every corner was aggressive, tight, and near perfect, saving an additional 0.6s over the previous WR, and putting the run 1.2 seconds ahead of pace in aggregate.  If you watch the live version of this run on twitch, you'll find that I was genuinely surprised at this gold split.  While early hammers is always required for my target times, this aerial race was as close to perfect as I think has ever been executed, and I'm thrilled that it made it into the WR video.

Silly Race:

This one is the run killer, getting a top time in Marble Madness is tremendously difficult primarily due to this race.  The Silly Skip shortcut is, optimally, a pixel-perfect frame-perfect endeavor... and the variability of the preceding birds mean that there is no consistent setup or approach to nailing the trick, which has now become mandatory.  So not only do you have to go for it to have a shot at improving the world record, but the required inputs to execute it end up being slightly different every...single... time.

My initial climb was relatively clean, but I had to hestitate in order to not broadside one of the birds.  I also had a slightly slower version of the 1-bounce silly skip, ultimately causing this race to be 0.5s slower than the previous record.  However, with the huge Intermediate and Aerial timesaves I was still 0.6s ahead of world record coming into the final race of the game.

Ultimate Race:

I call this level, not at all affectionately, the Choke Race. That is because while I feel like it is about tied for third (with Intermediate race) as far as executional difficulty, approaching it knowing that you are on world record pace can make it extremely jarring.  Getting the Silly Skip to go off properly after everything else puts a ton of pressure on this final race to perform flawlessly.  There is no room to hesitate or play safely on this level without losing time.

Things went horribly off-script as soon as I hit the downhill ramp after the pipe.  I accidentally bounce off of the wall, come probably within 1 or 2 pixels from flying off the top of the red floor area, go on the opposite-side of the acid compared to what I was planning, and then get ridiculously close to the bottom of the first edge of the disappearing ramp section - so basically almost dying 3 times within a span of a few seconds.  However, none of these mistakes actually cost any time - and in fact I finished this race about 0.1s faster than the previous record.

Final Time: 2:44.271

I am very happy with this improvement, knocking about 3/4ths of a second off of the previous effort - but I also know that there could be a legendary Silly Race performance out there that couples with the other timesaves to bring this into the 2:43 or even 2:42 territory.

This time around I want to thank Toad22484, Yelsraek, and AD2 for bringing the good times to the new Marble Madness discord, and AD2 in particular for making the Genesis and Sega Master System versions of this game into the limelight.  I also want to thank the people in my life who continue to support my hobbie, with special acknowledgement to Vixentropy for tolerating victory screams at 2 in the morning.

It's really exciting to be a part of the history of one of my favorite games and see my name up on the same website as some of the most talented gamers out there.  The speedrunning community has come to mean a great deal to me, with all the wonderful people who I have met at the AGDQs who expand my horizons.  Also enormous thanks to the Games Done Quick staff for giving me the honor of running this game at SGDQ 2017!